My younger sister asked me,
“What do you want in a guy?”
I launched into a list of ‘don’t wants’, which she interrupted with
“I didn’t ask you what you don’t want, I asked what you WANT?”
Hmm – never thought about that!
She lent to me a book called ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne– which is about the Law of Attraction. The basic premise of this law is that ‘like’ attracts ‘like’. The things you focus on – negative and positive- become your reality. So if you focus on positive stuff, you attract positive things and so with the negative.
As a Christian (or whatever I am these days), my knee jerk reaction is to dismiss ‘The Secret’ – after all it is New Age stuff. The problem with New Age is that it seeks to de-personalise and control God, by reducing Him to terms like ‘ the universe’ or ‘Energy’ or ‘the Force’. I have too much respect for God to even think that I can begin to control Him. Don’t think I haven’t tried it. Like many Christians I am guilty of trying to manipulate God through prayer
But there’s something to be learned from the Secret. After all truth is truth - whether it is in your doctrine or not. Most of the principles in the Secret are borrowed from the Bible. These Biblical principles aren’t restricted to just Christians. Regardless of who you are, if you apply them, they will work.
For example Faith - in the Bible, the book of Hebrews 11:1 (New International Version) says that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. The book of James 2: 17 says that - Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead
In the Secret, a story is told to support the statement - When you want to attract something in your life make sure your actions don’t contradict your desires
Here’s an extract
…a story of a woman who wanted to attract the perfect partner into her life. She had done all the right things: She got clear about what she wanted him to be like, made a detailed list of all his qualities and visualised him in her life. Despite doing all these things there was no sign of him.
Then one day as she arrived home and was parking her car in the middle of the garage, she gasped as she realised that her actions were contradicting what she wanted. If her car was in the middle of the garage, there was no room for her perfect partner’s car. Her actions were powerfully saying to the Universe that she did not believe she was going to receive what she had asked for. So she immediately cleaned up her garage and parked her car to one side leaving space for her perfect partner’s car on the other side.
The story goes on about her doing the same thing about her making space in her wardrobe bed and concludes with, After taking all these powerful actions and acting as if she had already received her perfect partner, he arrived in her life and they are now happily married
Hang on; isn’t this faith coupled with action? A Biblical Principle?
So fired up with this story I decided to apply some faith to my life – and what a result.
I wrote a list of all the things I wanted in the perfect partner e.g. nice teeth, taller than me, educated, musical, middle class, spiritual, extrovert etc and then started acting as if he’d already arrived in my life. (Okay I haven’t replaced my single bed- would that be going too far?)
The next day, as I was waiting for my train, a guy randomly started talking to me and conversation ended with him giving me his number and asking me to call him if I wanted to go out for a drink. He pretty much fit the brief. I was amazed. Today I met up with him for coffee, which was nice, but spark was somewhat diminished. The learning point is that I need to revise my criteria – not make it focussed on external. Talking to him made me realise there are other things I want in a guy – which he didn’t have.
This is exciting stuff!
